Silent Hill: Shattered Memories Out February 2010

It looks like survival horror fans are going to have to wait a little longer for the release of the first ever Silent Hill game on the Wii™.It was originally advertised by some retailers as being due for releasein November, but according to CVG, Konami has confirmed exclusively with them that Silent Hill: Shattered Memories will be released in February on all formats. The Konami rep also said that the game was never actually due for release in November anyway.

In case you don’t know what all the excitement is about and why some of us have already drawn a big red ring around February in our 2010 calendars, Silent Hill: Shattered Memories is described by Konami as a “clever reimagining of the now out-of-print first Silent Hill title”. Sharing the plot of that classicPlayStation game 10 years on, Shattered Memories will give the player the opportunity to explore many different paths than in the original game. Characters that you approach will give different answers, and appear in different locations, and there will be new clues to follow. All of which means that even if you’ve played the original to death there should be plenty to hold your attention this time around, and of course the graphics will be a million times better too.

In case you’ve forgotten or are new to the Silent Hill universe the plot centres around Harry Mason and his search for his missing daughter, Cheryl, which takes him to the very, very creepy and evil town of Silent Hill. According to Konami, the Wii™ version will utilise the Wii Remote™ as a torch and cell phone. Anyone who’s ever stumbled around in the murky depths of a Silent Hill game will attest that a torch is a vital piece of equipment. The cell phone can be used to view maps via its GPS function and also as a camera. Another new element that has been added to the gameplay is psyche profiling, which will keep track of players’ reactions and actions during the game, such as where you explore first, what items you examine and so on. This information will then be used to subtly alter how Harry interacts with other people and entities in the game. In other words, it allows the Silent Hill folks to mess with your head even more than usual.

Good job they didn’t have psyche profiling in Silent Hill 2 when I was hiding in the cupboard from Pyramid Head. Still haven’t recovered fully from the trauma…